Heirloom [Poetry]

by Jill McDonough

The New York Times reveals a man has bought,
at auction, a forty-five hundred dollar mummified
hand.Hopefully it doesn’t have any badseeds attachedhe said, the sort of line
that should be followed with “he quipped.” We know
what he almost means: a curse, a vengeful mummy,
rest disturbed, his corpse exhumed, his hand—
long ivory nails, frayed linen, delicate bones
in a tannic sort-of leather—broken off,
and sold at auction. The hand-buyer intends
it as an heirloom for his kids. Across
the country, warm toast in our mouths, we shake
our heads, turn to our spouses, smack the paper and sayIt’s a goddamn mummy’s hand, you stupid fuck,as if the hand bestowed its owner with
the power to hear collective common sense.
The Monkey’s Paw, The Hand of Glory, now in New York
it drums its fingers, biding its endless time.

***

The winner of a 2014 Lannan Literary Fellowship and three Pushcart prizes, Jill McDonough is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008),Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), and Where You Live (Salt, 2012). The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared inPoetry, Slate, The Nation,The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She directs the MFA program at UMass-Boston and 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center online.